Everybody hates him, but McGinn may have last laugh

The governor isn’t speaking to him, most of the City Council dislikes him and a good chunk of Seattle sees him as a bicycle-riding obstructionist. So why is Mayor Mike McGinn sitting pretty?

McGinn

Because he’s managed to maneuver Gov. Chris Gregoire and much of the city’s political establishment – including just about any potential 2013 challenger – into the unenviable position of basically having promised Jet City residents there will be no problems with a huge transportation project: the tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

McGinn got himself into trouble when he said in October that “I don’t believe we can trust” Gregoire or Olympia to protect Seattle’s interests when it comes to the tunnel. Last week Gregoire told seattlepi.com she hadn’t spoken to McGinn since, and that he’d “demeaned” the mayor’s office by making things personal. McGinn has deservedly taken his lumps for being so frank, but his refusal to play nice has made for an easy-to-understand dynamic on the $4.2 billion tunnel replacement project: McGinn hates it; everybody else loves it.

Construction is set to begin on the tunnel next year. If anything goes wrong – from construction problems to cost overruns – Mike “I told you so” McGinn will see his popularity jump while his foes will be scrambling for cover.

There’s a clause in the state authorizing legislation that says Seattle would have to pick up cost overruns. The state attorney general says that’s unenforceable and tunnel supporters say not to worry about it. But some lawmakers insist they’ll make sure Seattle pays if the tunnel busts its budget. If it does, expect a battle royale in Olympia as anti-Seattle sentiment reaches higher than the Space Needle. Seattle voters will see McGinn as the guy who was sticking up for their interests and quickly turn on those perceived to have gotten the city into this mess.

From a policy standpoint, it’s easy to argue that abandoning the tunnel would’ve been far worse than going forward; Seattle’s reputation as the capital of liberal dithering would’ve been cemented. As soon as the tunnel contracts are signed, there’s pretty much no going back.

But the tunnel debate has become so pitched that logic left the building a long time ago. Consider that the environmentalist McGinn objects to a tunnel that will decrease auto capacity on State Route 99 through downtown by about 35 percent, while business interests support the option that will actually make it harder to get to the core shopping district and result in up to 800 downtown parking spaces being removed. Details from environmental and transportation studies are generally ignored by most voters, but McGinn has wisely seized on something that’s easier to grasp – who’s going to get stuck with the bill.

The tunnel can make McGinn crazy (see his impolitic statements about the governor). But in turn, McGinn makes everybody else crazy. He’s pushed otherwise savvy policy makers into a corner on the tunnel. Sure, the project could come off without a hitch. But considering that crews will be digging through the watefront’s notoriously unstable ground and that people in Seattle react poorly to big construction headaches, it’s just as likely there will be problems.

McGinn’s no-can-trust Olympia statement stemmed from his anger about what he sees as the state’s obfuscations about the tunnel. The mayor insists the state purposely kept the city in the dark about the fact that a potential tunnel bidder dropped out of the process earlier this year, leaving just two companies to vie for the job. There are also lingering hard feelings over beliefs the state backed out of an agreement to allow the Seattle area to better prepare transit options to mitigate the effects of pouring tens of thousands of additional cars on downtown streets because so many will object to paying tunnel tolls.

McGinn’s predecessor, Mayor Greg Nickels, also had a relatively chilly relationship with Gregoire, though they made nice in public. And you could probably count on one hand the number of substantive discussions Nickels and House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, had during Nickels’ two terms (McGinn and Chopp get along much better, as Chopp also hates the tunnel). City Council President Richard Conlin has labored mightily to repair the strains in the Seattle-Olympia relationship, and it’s Conlin who Gregoire now turns to when she wants to speak to someone at City Hall.

But remember that all politics is local. If tunnel construction hits a snag McGinn’s biggest perceived flaw – his intransigence on this issue – will turn into his biggest strength.